Scaredy Cat

This cat lives down the street from us, and every time I walk by with the dog it's crouched down on the windowsill, giving us that wide-eyed look. It cracks me up. There's just something about its expression that seems so alarmed. Maybe that's just its face -- but then again, I suppose indoor cats have all the same fight-or-flight responses as the rest of the animal world, and since they're never in any true danger they "invent" some from whatever they see out the window.

I spent yesterday at home, doing lots of little tasks. I did three loads of laundry and took Dave's shirts to the cleaners. I also picked up the blue Etienne Aigner suit from Bob Stoodley's trunk, which I'd had cleaned, and took it to a charity shop. So now that's out of my life.

I walked Olga, who I was prepared to take to the cemetery or even the Heath, but she seemed content to wander around the neighborhood. She is definitely showing her age.

I vacuumed the house and trimmed some stuff in the garden and moved the avocado tree outside for the summer:

That orchid in the avocado's pot was outside only momentarily. Speaking of orchids, as I've mentioned before, the orchids on our dining room windowsill are struggling with an infestation of scale. I gave them all a last-ditch treatment with bug spray -- I did it in our shower so as not to contaminate the garden, hopefully not poisoning myself in the process -- and gave them a good watering. I also once again cleaned the windowsill to remove the "honeydew," as the sticky excretions from scale insects is so poetically called. It's pretty disgusting and I'm on the verge of throwing them all out. I probably just need to stay on top of that situation better.

I also finally got to read some of "Bel Canto," Ann Patchett's book from about 20 years ago that I've been meaning to read pretty much ever since it came out. It got a lot of accolades at the time but I just never picked it up before now. I think I had the idea that it was some kind of opera-based romance novel, but in fact it's a hostage drama, which is much more interesting.

In the evening we watched a mediocre movie on Netflix called "How It Ends," starring Forest Whitaker. Boy, is his career in the crapper. The movie was about some apocalyptic doomsday event that causes societal collapse, and a guy who's stranded in Chicago has to make a dangerous overland journey back to Seattle to find out what's happened to his pregnant fiancee. Whitaker plays the fiancee's father, who lives in Chicago and goes along for the ride. There's a lot of tiresome macho posturing, and I was annoyed because (spoiler alert) the movie never explains the apocalyptic event -- so, despite the title, we never in fact learn "how it ends." Don't promise what you can't deliver!